"Well," and Small laughed, "you remember that I warned you I never could play for piker money, Colonel—that is, not very well."
Colonel Jimmy gave him a look that was all wolf—and cornered wolf at that. He answered Small with a nasty sneer.
"So you can't play well unless big money is bet, eh? That is exactly what I'm beginning to think, sir!"
"At any rate," said Small, "I've cured your lumbago for you, Colonel. You can charge that thousand to doctor bills!"
Colonel Jimmy gulped a few times, his neck swelled and his face turned purple. There wasn't a single thing he could find to say in answer to that remark. He started for the seventeenth tee, snarling to himself. I couldn't stand it any longer. I drew Archie aside.
"I think you might have told me," I said.
"Told you what?"
"Why, about Small—if that's his name. What have you done? Rung in a professional on the old man?"
"Professional, your grandmother!" said Archie. "Small is an amateur in good standing. Darned good standing. If the Colonel knew as much about the Middle West as he pretends to know, he'd have heard of Small. Wonder how the old boy likes the Chicago method of shearing a pig?"
The old boy didn't like it at all, but the seventeenth hole put the crown on his rage and mortification. Small drove another long straight ball, and after the Colonel had got through sneering about that he topped his own drive, slopped his second into a bunker, and reached the green in five when he should have been there in two. I thought the agony was over, but I didn't give Small credit for cat-and-mouse tendencies.